Photo by lorigoldberg.

And now, for today’s lesson in cultivating numerous media sources!

Over at the Examiner, the status of wireless service installation inside Metro stations is not good. In fact, reports Kytja Weir, the sky is downright falling:

Metro’s promised upgrade to cell phone service in its underground rail system is behind schedule. The transit agency had pledged to have all of its 47 underground rail stations fully wired by last October. But so far, only the 20 busiest underground stations provide steady signals to all riders.

“We are not in a position to know when it will be done,” Metro spokesman Dan Stessel told The Washington Examiner.

Oh, man! That’s Metro missing the mark again, right? But, hold the phone — a report in the Washington Post by Dana Hedgpeth on the exact same subject and quoting the exact same spokesperson has a vastly different take on the story:

If your cellphone seems to have better service when you’re riding Washington’s subway, transit officials say it isn’t your imagination.

A consortium of four nationwide carriers — Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile — is working “every night and throughout the weekends” to install fiber and equipment, Metro’s chief spokesman Dan Stessel said.

“On any given night, there may be as many as six or seven separate job sites on the system,” Stessel said.

Well, now things don’t sound so bad, do they?

The issue at hand is one of deadlines. The twenty busiest Metro stations were to have access to cell phone networks by October 2009. That’s been done. The difference here boils down to whether you want to be angry at WMATA for aiming to have all 47 underground stations outfitted with wireless technology by October 2010 or not. The rail system — which, under the outline of its deal with Congress requiring the installation of cell phone service in underground stations, has until October 2012 to complete such work — set that October 2010 guideline, but it appears they were a little too optimistic, as only 75 to 80 percent of the work is actually completed.

So, to summarize: Will WMATA meet the federally mandated goal of getting everything together by October 2012? It sounds like that will happen. Did WMATA miss an internal deadline which apparently has some people upset? Yes, that happened too. In any case, we’ll all be able to call people underground by the end of 2012, unless something crazy happens.

Everyone all clear here?